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This hobby is full of oddballs. Post your encounters here.
Namco:
The guy who delivered my arcade machine was a character. He was from the central valley of California (the boonies) and drove up in a beat up Chevy pickup with beat up clothes to match. He was about 5'6" with arms like tree trunks from moving around arcade machines... or maybe he was in construction or something. Whatever, he had to get a Simpsons 4-player off the back of his truck to get my machine off and he did it like the thing was made of paper mache'. Also he had a few things to say about the homeboys that he saw walking around on the way to my house. Whatever his faults he was a good guy and we talked for a long time about arcade machines and the collection of machines he had in his garage that he was restoring for sale on ebay.
As for characters wanting to look at my restored Street Fighter 2, I don't really play with the garage door open. It was so hot on Sunday evening that I was playing some Fun House with the garage door open for the first time since I built the thing and got a few glances from passers by. The marquee is so bright that it's really obvious that it's a Street Fighter 2 machine from across the street, so I closed the door as soon as I could. I just don't want to attract attention, nothing good can come of it.
Ginsu Victim:
I hear you on the not attracting attention thing.
When I finished my cabinet, I had to get it from the workshop to the house, but my backdoor wasn't big enough. We took it around front and, luckily, no one in the neighborhood seemed to be home, and no one drove by.
Whew!
SavannahLion:
--- Quote from: Namco on June 24, 2008, 03:44:33 pm ---It was so hot on Sunday evening that I was playing some Fun House with the garage door open for the first time since I built the thing and got a few glances from passers by. The marquee is so bright that it's really obvious that it's a Street Fighter 2 machine from across the street, so I closed the door as soon as I could. I just don't want to attract attention, nothing good can come of it.
--- End quote ---
I saw this pretty cool idea in a guys garage. He built a free floating wall just behind the garage door. Far enough back that he added shelves in the space between. Behind the wall he "hid" his work shop. I've considered the same. A free floating wall and a long curtain on the exposed side. To protect the cabinets from nosy neighbors as well as to set a clearly defined area for the cabinets to live.
I looked at other options such as retrofitting the garage door with a security type vented garage door (similar to roll down security doors in front of many stores) and an exhaust fan. But it appears the cost is either too high or building code is too restrictive for those solutions. Why you need restrictive building code on adding an exhaust fan to a garage is beyond me. Can anyone explain the logic behind that?
vertygo:
I gave a non-working machine to someone on Craigslist that I talked to. I wanted to make sure he was keen on fixing it/maming it and not just trying to flip it right away. He was a great guy, not alot of experience (like me) but was very happy to get the machine. I told him it was really heavy, and to bring friends. Sure, sure, no problem. He brought along his 2 tween daughters!
Suffice it to say, we had a heck of a time loading it into his truck. On the plus side, both his kids were amazed that their dad was buying this arcade machine for them.
On the non-arcade side of things, I went to a movie with a group of people.. Iron Man.. one of the women said that that technology already existed (his chest piece) and it was invented by Nichola Tesla. Eegads.
Mauzy:
Ive only met one person who was not necessarily in the hobby, but has been the service tech around here for the past 20 years. I job shadowed him for a 8 to 5 shift. This guy was awesome. Pretty much the entire was spent going around the shop checking out what they had that was down and talking about the demise of arcade gaming (the pinball industry specifically) and what the future held for ops. I also had a few minutes to sneak around their cold storage. Didn't find anything special as back in the heyday of the industry they used to send a semi of old cabs to auction every couple years for cash to stock up on the latest games. If you bought a cab at an Indianapolis auction 10 or 15 years ago, chances are good it was a Melody Music cab at some point.
I did find two French EM pinball machines stuck in a corner. All but two of the techs had no idea they were there and the guy who I shadowed had no idea where they came from or how long they've been there. They were under a stack of eight or nine 8-liner cabs, so I couldn't see too much about them.
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